Play Nice
by Crimson-Eyed-Angel99
Summary: Albel Nox had 'military fallout' written all over his face. Really, if Nel had pushed up those unkempt multicolored bangs, she wouldn't have been surprised to find it scrawled on his forehead. Unfortunately, once you save the world together, everybody feels inclined to shove you together on baddie-hunting missions. (Rating for mild language)
1. Chapter 1

-One-

Albel Nox had military fallout written all over his face. Really, if Nel had pushed up those unkempt multicolored bangs, she wouldn't have been surprised to find it scrawled on his forehead. If his character were any more shallow, minnows would have trouble swimming in it.

Hell, the fact the psychopath had even helped save the world—planet—giant… galaxy thing was quite close to an embarrassment to Elicoor II. His bug obsession more so.

Upon being dumped back on Elicoor II, however, Nel was damned if she didn't keep getting thrown on the same 'diplomatic teams' with him. Clair—_and _Tynaeve _and_ Farlene—were all asking if Albel had reformed under the guidance of his king. If he _had_, then they were willing to begin to forgive. If he _hadn't_, Nel should be under no circumstances travelling with him.

If he _had_, Clair indicated, perhaps redemption was possible. Nel had a dark suspicion about what that might mean – aside from the relations between their queen and Airyglyph's king, she was still one of the few Aquarians in government with an Airyglyphian… comrade.

Never mind this 'comrade's' idea of a good time was still killing porcupines and giant spiders and wolves and, oddly useful, clearing the area paths of bandits that had bothered both Airyglyph and Aquaria for generations.

She would be damned if they let that acquaintanceship push her into some misguided relationship with him though. She would be damned, also, if she gave up on keeping in contact with Cliff Fittir so easily.

–all right, so that plan was damned from the get-go; the man was clearly in love with Mirage, or Maria, or Fayt. It was honestly so hard to tell.

Which left her and Albel the only remnants of what had almost been the end of everything ever. It was probably why she had been assigned to continue clearing the Mountains of Barr of rogue Airyglyph and Aquarian soldiers (there were some Aquarians, not many) who thought the administration had lost its mind to the giant ship of doom and the strangers from offworld.

She was seriously considering killing Albel herself at this point.

And he didn't even have to SAY anything. That was more of the point.

They had been travelling in silence for the better part of the day when Albel suddenly cursed. This was about as surprising as a duck taking to water, but she glanced over at him.

"Problem?"

"…"

He kept walking past her.

"Love to know," she said, putting one hand on her hip. "We're alone out here. Anything that's significant to you…"

He looked over his shoulder, eyes narrowed, pouty lips pursed, and said nothing. He looked like a GIRL.

"…might be important to me," Nel led, gesturing slightly as if to say 'so spill the damn beans already. ' Albel 'hmphed' and kept walking, drawing his marathon of a sword.

"I sense maggots," he said and began to run into the fray. Sighing, she readied her knives and runeology and followed him over the craggy edge of hill that led into the next valley.

Ambush was the wrong word—he nearly knocked her down in his forward-facing retreat, the gauntlet splayed as he backed up, the katana still drawn. He had almost stabbed himself on her knives. That would have been ironic.

"What—too many?" she asked, sidestepping quickly around the man. The valley was empty: a bunch of rocks and brush studded the hill down. Her mind whirred with this information and she spun on her heel for an attack from behind, but no. Albel was standing there as if nothing had happened, purple skirt fluttering in the breeze. She took a deep breath.

"Was something _ever_ there?"

"…"

"You don't need to preface everything with silence, Nox. Was. Or _is_. Something there."

He strode past her and moved on, down into the valley. It didn't escape her that his katana remained in hand, his shoulders tense, and he moved with a more calculated swagger. She sheathed her knives and strode after him. If she didn't know the story behind his behavior (well, some of it, anyway), she would have assumed at this point he was playing with her mind.

Gossip spread, even from Airyglyph to Aquaria (more so now that tensions had eased) and Albel's was one of the more amusing stories. Unable to 'release his emotions to blend with an air dragon,' raised into another brigade, left hand ruined and hidden in a gauntlet—if the man weren't a complete psychopath with a byzantine take-no-prisoners rule, it would have made a good novel. As it was, she slept with one eye open.

She still didn't know what he thought of _her_.

#

Albel Nox, strangely-dressed and homicidal character of children's nightmares, played 'Fake Ambush' two more times that day and Nel had just about had it with him. What was worse, they hadn't found any of the soldiers.

"Nox," she said, around evening. "We should start heading back."

"…"

"This far north isn't good for camping. Neither of us like dragons."

She saw him flinch at the mention of dragon relations. Which was weird and partially the reason she'd said it that way and _huzzah,_ a reaction. He'd even stopped walking.

"You want to stay up here tonight, I want a really good reason," she said. And waited.

"Three members of the Dragon Brigade have defected. I am here to retrieve them."

"You don't retrieve," she said automatically. If retrieval or capture of enemies was _ever_ an option, he might be less of a complete asshole. But he was looking at her, assessing.

Apparently, she failed some test because he 'hmphed' again, spun, and started walking away. Further up the damn mountain.

"You're going to take on three of that bridgade alone? On dragons?" She felt the overwhelming need to state the obvious. Maybe he needed it. "That's suicide, Nox!"

"They're maggots."

"The king will blame me if I come back alone!" she called and Albel laughed, deep and throaty and chilling. So many of her comrades had heard the same laugh in their nightmares.

"My blood won't be on your blades. My king won't mourn."

They had thrown him in the dungeon on nothing but suspicion of treachery. She could picture the king's severe face, lips pursing for a moment as he thought about the gory death of his former Black Brigade leader, face softening when he realized he just wasn't going to have to deal with Albel anymore, and then the world around him getting brighter and brighter. Like the sun coming out. She coughed. No, the king of Airyglyph wasn't going to be all broken up. Unless…

"What if they hold you hostage?" she called.

Again, the Laugh.

"It may not matter to _you_, but my queen will plead for mercy. She'll insist Aquaria pay the ransom, or call back Fayt and Cliff to rescue you. A whole platoon brought out to save you. That's how this is going to end."

He was looking back at her, something like extreme irritation in his face. She had a very good point, one that was hard to refute. The man admired Fayt and, to a certain extent, Cliff. Being rescued by them was highly embarrassing. Being paid off by Aquaria was _ridiculously_ embarrassing. Considering the humiliating possibilities, it was surprising Albel Nox never took prisoners.

He thought a moment later, then turned to head up the hill again.

"You're going to chance it?" she called after him.

"They know me. They will kill me. _If they can_." His tone reeked of confidence. Nel thought about it a moment and wished she shared the man's certainty. A dead Albel would have been easier. But they might not and, distasteful and socially-stunted as the man might be, dying on the Mountains of Barr in the dirt and the dust was horrible. There was no telling when anyone might find your body and if they didn't kill him but _almost_ killed him—

Maybe it would boost Airyglyph/Aquaria relations. Until Romeria and King Arzei posted the marriage bans, the two countries needed all the partnership assets they could get.

So thinking, she started up the hill after him.


	2. Chapter 2

Yeah, so, this fic became about 10,000 words. That's about where it's going to top out, I think. It's fun to write an adventure story once in a while. Though… my neighbors must think I never leave this darn table or keyboard. D:

Made some chances to chapter one, as there was one part I didn't find believable, even for me.

Knife Viking: Thank you! Glad you're enjoying it. :) I hope to have more up soon.

###

An hour later, the former dread of the Aquarian nation was relying on her runelogical skill just to keep walking on the rock-strewn mountain path.

"What did you plan on doing if I wasn't here?" she couldn't help asking as they moved on, his feet sure thanks to the light of her runeology. He didn't answer. After waiting several seconds, she doused the light. All movement stopped.

"… we don't need to stop here," Albel said, voice no more than an angry hiss.

"Stop pretending I'm a mobile lamppost."

"Your runeology is the only reason you are useful."

"And without it, you'd be tripping all over yourself in this dark. We've been working together two weeks, Nox. I'm fine with missions, I'm fine with working alone, I'm fine from being away from Aquaria for months on end, but I can't work with you in _total_ _silence_."

Ironically, the response she got from this was total silence for almost a full minute. It was bad enough that she lit the light again, though the clanking of his gauntlet or the unsheathing of his katana would have alerted her to any kind of attack. Not that he could have hit her in the dark.

"You want me to chat, Aquarian?" he said.

"If you know how," she shot back. "Your nemesis is probably sleeping anyway."

He looked up ahead, the light barely touching his face beneath the sporadic pieces of hair, and continued walking, proud.

"They will be keeping a watch. We could be attacked at any time."

There was the sound of his katana being drawn, the gauntlet clanking noisily as he did so, and he moved ahead of her, forcing her to summon a still brighter light so the man didn't kill himself. Nel scowled. It was going to be impossible to maintain the light and have her knives in hand. She was a walking, well-lit target. At least Nox wasn't clever enough to have _planned _it that way.

"Nox," she said.

"…"

—but he'd heard her. He turned.

"Guard me," she said flatly. He blinked at her a moment, then sneered in the most incredibly nauseating way and retreated to her side, murmuring something about an escort mission. It was so strange to hear him murmur something at all—something that didn't need to be said! From Albel!—that she looked over at him, forgetting to be annoyed. The sneer had vanished, replaced with a predatory gaze that swept the shadows. At least he took the responsibility seriously.

Cliff would have been—being Cliff. And flirting. And that would have been nice. As it was, she moved on with her own personal attack dog, the light growing increasingly difficult to maintain. After another half hour, she was slowing. Albel, however, had the apparent energy reserves of all the small red dragons they had dispatched earlier this morning. She recalled now that they had landed hits on him.

Amazing how much damage the man could take and endure. That's what you learned, growing up in a country perpetually at war.

"We're going to need to stop soon," she said. She had been trying to control her breathing but… any further and the next morning was going to be exhaustion, nothing less.

Albel thought about this too.

"Another half hour."

"Then you'll be going in the dark," she said and slipped the pack off her back. She had been assessing where they stood for sleepability: the mountain face would gave them something to brace their backs against in case of attack and the ledge was wide enough that there was no danger of falling. No dragons had come upon them either. Albel looked down at her, rotating the shoulder dissolving into that gauntlet as if some kind of nervous tic, and didn't sit down.

She doused the light and felt trickles of energy begin feeding back into her system. Sighing in what counted as contentment out here, she leaned back against the mountain and closed her eyes. Still listening for the sound of the katana sliding out of its sheath, however.

Tired, not an idiot.

After a minute of this, she opened one eye. Albel was still standing there, only just visible in the near-total dark.

"Why are you standing there like that?" she asked.

"I can sleep standing."

"You didn't the other nights," she said wearily.

"We weren't so close to an enemy, fool," he replied. She made to summon a light again, yawning, and her hands began to glow.

"No," he snapped and she lost her concentration, the light blinking out of existence. Surprisingly, he actually elaborated. "We are hidden here. If you sleep, I'll watch."

Every nerve in her shrieked against that plan even as they simultaneously cried out for rest. "How can I be sure you won't kill me in my sleep?"

It was the elephant-in-the-room question and she saw him start to answer, heard the words begin in his throat, then stop. He took another moment and said words that took effort.

"I swear I will not kill you in your sleep."

She lifted an eyebrow which she realized he couldn't see it. Really, there wasn't anything the man could do but swear not to do something. Still she felt vulnerable.

"Are you going to leave before I wake up?" she asked. If the man decided to do so, it was his own head in the noose. She had tried to help him and her conscience would be satisfied. In the dark, his response was invisible. The gauntlet clanked at his side, finger-claws clanking together idly as he stood. Maybe he didn't respond at all.

She nodded to herself and closed her eyes. No other option at this point.

#

When she woke, it was to a small red dragon curled in her arms, several more snoozing around her legs, as a large black one sniffed at Albel's still-standing figure, its nostrils flickering with interest, wings camped up around its shoulders.

An ambush in the most unexpected sense of the word.

The reptilian head nudged the gauntlet and nostrils flared at the metal scent. Eyes narrowed. Albel was awake; she could tell from his twitching human hand, fingers beating gently against his thumb, waiting for his moment. Nel set the dragon in her arms down very gently and began to summon a runelogical attack as the dragon took the gauntlet roughly in its mouth. Unfortunately, it was at the same moment Albel moved to defend himself. The runelogical attack was already moving, shooting a round of glistening ice needles towards the dragon.

The attack _had _been precisely aimed: the dragon took four of the needles in the chest and released Albel's arm. Albel took one in the neck. It didn't slow his drawing of his katana nor the fact that the sword went cleanly through the dragon without prior momentum.

The man was _strong_.

The dragon fell, more or less bisected and partially frozen and the small red dragons squealed in alarm, running as a horde to head-butt Albel. The katana swept most of them out of the way. The one that got through knocked the man back, staggering, and prepared to attack again. Another round of ice needles took it out.

"Good morning," Nel said, finally able to get up without unsettling dragons. "I see we had visitors."

"…"

"Should I chalk that up to the ice needle?" she asked, moving closer. The man was having trouble swallowing, making small gurgling sounds that she didn't want to admit alarmed her. Well, he hadn't killed her in her sleep. She summoned a runelogical spell.

"Hold still, I'm going to heal you."

If it had been anything but something impeding his windpipe, he probably would have protested. As it was, she could almost hear a 'thank you' in the gasping recovery. The gauntlet was still crushed in places from the dragon's handling. Metal alloy didn't do well with runelogy.

"You'll have to get that battered out back at Airyglyph," she said and he nodded absently, pushing at the metal as if it was a foreign thing and had failed him.

"Does it hurt?" she asked. The sneering smile came back.

"Too little left in it to hurt, Aquarian."

Gossip was right then. His badly-burned forearm was still somewhere deep within the construct, probably good for nothing more than forcing the construct to bend and move, channeling the energy through it that Airyglyph swore wasn't runeology.

"At least it's not your dominant hand," she said, because something had to be said to end the conversation, and started up the hill. Then, a thought occurred.

"Was it?"

"I don't chat," he said, as if there had never been a break in their conversation the night before. "We will be close by midday or they will have moved on."

"How do you know all this?" Nel asked.

"…"

"They sent you some kind of challenge, didn't they."

"I did not think you would accompany me, worm."

"No, see, I became 'Aquarian scum' some while ago. I've graduated from 'worm,' so don't try to insult me just because you're scared. And you've no right to involve me in a planned deathmatch without mentioning it!"

"Go home if you're scared, maggot. Crawl to your mother!"

"Where are they waiting? Are there actually three? We can return and tell the queen—"

"Leave!"

She looked at him squarely. This time, it was Albel who had stopped, hand resting on the hilt of his katana, the dented gauntlet strained with effort at his side. Regardless of what he said, he had to feel some kind of pain in it; the dragon's attack had been with specific hatred. It was true then, what they had said about air dragons not getting along with Albel…

"No," she said, setting a hand on one hip again and lifting a shoulder. "Does it bother you that I'm staying?"

"You aren't stronger than me. You'll only get in the way, Aquarian scum."

"Nox, I just saved your life. I don't plan on doing it again. I do plan on seeing you returned to Airyglyph and never working with you again. That's my mission. If it has to involve your deathmatch with the Dragon Brigade, that's something I have to live with. Now. Lead on."

His expression was one of irritation but resignation. It was possible to argue that he was better off alone, if better off meant dying.

"Did they order you to come alone?" she asked as they walked on. Albel didn't turn and she could tell the man was unsettled. He almost slipped once.

"No one ordered me to do anything," he hissed in reply. Of course. The great Albel Nox taking orders, not a chance.

"So, no," she said. "But I'm guessing they don't expect a brigade of our own."

One of those many times a bigger party would have been useful—she thought fondly of Cliff and Fayt and working with people who weren't Albel. Albel was smiling tightly at her suggestion.

"And since we don't have a brigade, that'll work," Nel said, just to remind him that she got the joke here too. "Do I know these men?"

He looked at her, eyes narrowed.

"If you had met them, you would not be alive to speak of it."

Did he honestly not remember how many brigade members he'd lost to the forces of her, Fayt, and Cliff? For the most influential brigade in the country, they had some poor fighters, as well as megalomaniacs. She swallowed this commentary and kept climbing.

They were getting into the upper regions of Barr as a half-cloudy sky pulled overhead, shot here and there with brilliant blue. It wasn't as cold as Airyglyph but the higher they went, the colder it got and she pulled her scarf up around her face. Albel, in his usual level of scantily-cladness, did nothing.

They took a turn towards the Barr Caves at long last and she hesitated at the crossroads. Minotaurs, nyiads, _and_ dragons would be lurking in the dark and they were getting low on her items. So far, Albel hadn't given any indication that he had brought supportive resources.

"You said within the hour. The caves are going to take at least that to get out of."

"We travelled too _slow_," Albel said, motioning at one of the rocks at the mouth entrance, much scored by dragon claws. Nel stared at it, then at Albel. Dragon claws. Awesome. _Meaning…?_

"I recognize the claw marks," he said. "They went within."

Drawing his katana, the man strode in without waiting to hear what a terrible idea this was. Nel heaved a sigh, drew her knives, and followed.


	3. Chapter 3

This is my favorite chapter. If you like it too, that's cool. :)

###

_The man's paranoia was ten times worse in a cave._

"Nox. Nox. _Albel_."

About to plunge into yet another room chock full of monsters and item-draining battle, he stopped in the blackness of the doorway. Her nerves were shot, keeping up with his "there are enemies! Oh wait, there aren't" parade. What's more, it was about time for him to do it again, the way things had been going and if she could be sure of one thing, it was that they had already cleared this room of enemies. Making it a safe place for Albel's favorite thing: conversations.

"Why do you keep giving me false alarms?" she asked.

His face closed off, dark and suspicious. If he were better at lying, he might have lied.

"There are enough enemies here without you inventing them. We're in a cave. You _know_ I'm on my toes. Anything less is insulting to both of us. So?"

He rocked a little on his heels, glowering at a nearby collection of shadowed rocks. She turned to look, but there was nothing waiting there for them. Not even a treasure chest. She thanked the gods for those when they did show up, otherwise they would have been up Sanmite Steppes without a sword.

"Nox."

She could push him all day and the man would say nothing, but he was thinking about it. Grimacing about it. She waited.

"I sense them when they are not there," Albel said stiffly. "I told you to go home, Aquarian. This isn't a place for worms."

"I am not a worm." She strode past him into the blackness. "So maybe I'll just lead. Let me know if we're going to get attacked from behind."

"You don't know where you're going," Albel hissed.

"I'm sure you'll tell me if I get it wrong," she said, and stepped into the next battle with a hot pink nyiad. Albel, reluctantly, followed and she hoped they would get where they were going soon. Both of them were slowing.

And sensing enemies who weren't there, while it would benefit Albel while he was out killing porcupines and wildlife and bandits, made him a time bomb. Aquarians who had spent too long in military service suffered it and entered special houses for care and healing. Airyglyph simply promoted the sufferers until they ended up like Vox: control over everything, seeing enemies around every corner, and getting innocents killed. There was no telling if Albel would misidentify her as an enemy, misidentify an innocent on the way home as an enemy…

Yet this was one of the individuals who had _saved the world_. Fayt had known how to manage him, at least, and Fayt had... beaten him, earned his respect, then pointed him at every enemy in their path. No personal touch. Just application, a tool to move the cause forward.

They finished the battle without incident, Albel sheathed his sword, and someone began to applaud. Long, slow, gloved claps in the darkness. Finally, an enemy!

Nel began to summon a spell, ready to move immediately into the next battle and something like a hammer forged from darkness slammed into her. Her energy dropped to the point where standing was too much an effort. She dropped to the floor. Albel, a half second behind, leapt over her fallen form before realizing it was her and half-turned to look at her, baffled.

There wasn't time to analyze though: the clapper was on the attack—a standard brigade member, full of bravado and probably alcohol. Albel's attention switched from her to the brigade member in a second. The man had launched his dragon from off one of the ledges, plunging to attack Albel from the advantage of height.

In response, Albel sent forces of cutting air up at the dragon, channeling the various energies through the gauntlet. Apparently, it would work even when gnawed by dragons. Not that Nel could see much of this. It was too much work to lift her head.

She felt it when the dragon hit the ground and baled a death cry that shook the cavern. Then there was the sound of swords and traded banter.

"Even if you defeat me, the others are waiting!" the clapper (presumably, unless Albel was in the business of funny voices now) said.

"…"

"Come on, Albel. You can't seriously be putting your lot in with the Aquarians." The brigade member then went on to deride Aquarians and the belief system in no uncertain terms. Albel fought in silence. Eventually, so did the brigade member. Several times, she heard hisses of pain from the pair but was unable to identify the wounded.

She tried to summon a healing spell and the runeology behaved as if she didn't exist. For this, she carved up her body and encouraged her sisters to do the same.

Finally, Albel spoke.

"Hmph. Just another worm now."

"I imagine you say that about everyone you used to work with," Nel said, because staring at the ceiling was really getting very tiring. "He's dead?"

"…" Albel approached and crouched next to her, gaze unsympathetic. Once he was this close, she remembered that she had had to secure a oath from him not to kill her only the night before. Using the last of her energy, she pulled herself off the ground and vaulted, staggeringly, to the other side of the room before turning to face him. He lifted an eyebrow, rose from the crouch, and simply moved to follow her.

She didn't have the energy to mount a defense but she would be damned if she was going to let him see her fall over in exhaustion. She wobbled, holding the defensive stance.

"I'm in charge of saving your life," Albel said. Her internal cynic wondered if he knew how to go about doing that. When he didn't move, confirming the cynic's suspicions, she closed her eyes and turned her head away, leaning heavily on one knee.

"Don't make it sound like such a privilege."

"Hmph." She could hear him rummaging from something in wherever the hell it was Albel carried items and resources, neither of which she had seen thus far. All of a sudden, she could smell it and opened one eye to see him holding a piece of what might have once been food.

"Nox, what the hell is that?!"

The smell almost knocked her over and Albel pushed her back against the wall. It was only through her own forethought that she prevented her head from banging painfully against it. A thought ran through her mind and made her chuckle.

"Your bedside manner needs work."

"Eat this." He closed her hand around something and, once he was sure she had it in grasp, retreated several steps at the speed of light. His breathing was rasped and she could smell blood. Ah. He needed her to heal him. She sniffed at the damp piece of fish in her hand.

"Where did you get it? It smells awful—"

"Fayt gave it to me," Albel said. There was a touch of pride in his tone. "He said it would boost energy levels."

Nel took a bite and choked as the scent hit her nostrils like a slap in the face with a wet fish. Not even a _fresh_ fish, one that had been—oh gods—lying on the pier for a week or something. She forced herself to take another bite. Another.

Albel approached again as she finished and the light caught him this time. What she felt in energy levels, he must have felt in health with blood dribbling from a wound in his lower side. With no cloth to soak the blood or armor to shield the blow from being as bad as it was, the wound required immediate medical attention.

"Heal," he said. Demanded.

Nel looked up at him, nauseated even more by the severity of the wound and unwashed, exerted scent of him.

"I—" she began, intending to tell him that the fish hadn't helped in the slightest.

Instead, she threw up. Tried to speak. Threw up again.

"NOX WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?" she managed, finally. The man had danced back several steps and looked like a cat confronted by some unheretoforeseen horror, like aluminum foil.

"CHEAP SASHIMI WHY ARE YOU NOT BETTER?!"

She vomited again. All of this thing needed to be out of her stomach five minutes ago.

"Don't you have anything else?! _Not _given to you by Fayt?" Sounded a lot more like something Cliff would do, but apparently Fayt had his mean streak as well. Albel pulled something from—no, she wasn't going to wonder where—and shoved it at her as one would encourage a puppy to eat.

It was tuna salad. In some kind of container but very much tuna salad.

"Why do you have tuna salad."

"It will recover your energy."

"You realize that loquat juice, rambutan juice, tamarind juice, _any kind of cider imaginable—_" she threw up again. There was nothing for it but to try and eat the tuna salad. Using her fingers as a scoop, she took a bite and swallowed—not thinking about it, not thinking about it, not—she threw up again.

Albel glared at her as if she was doing this intentionally. Sighing hugely, the man unstrapped a metal flask of something from his belt and handed it to her. The container was so small she wasn't sure what good it could do. Albel's sullen glare indicated she should drink it without complaint.

It wasn't even a real drink, some kind of fruit parfait thing, but energy came flooding back as if in apology. She looked up at him, stunned, and he glowered back at her.

"Better, Aquarian?"

In answer, she stretched out a hand and summoned the healing spell. The strain on Albel's face eased and the smile of relief was almost sneer-free. Then, hair-flip, whirling back to face the ongoing battle of giant cave with former coworkers.

"Now to deal with the maggots."

"Two more, right?" Nel said, pushing herself up the wall and finding with surprise that it was easy. Her exhaustion and the minor physical ailments of the battles that day were gone. Tuna salad didn't sound like something forged in the pits of hell. Albel nodded.

"Assuming they have not allied with the Marquis."

The smile that had been verging on her lips vanished.

"What?"

"They are air dragon riders. They will gravitate to the greatest possible asset to their cause. This would be Crossel and there are three of them. They can beat him."

"When did you think of that?"

"When the worm came plummeting at me." Though she could tell from his voice he was sneering, his body language had more of a tense loathing, shoulders erect, voice low. "Without a dragon, I don't think of these things."

"Why don't you?" she said. The man came to a halt.

"A 'chat' is not an interrogation, Aquarian. And I just saved you to fight another day. Why don't _you_ talk. Or be silent." He began walking again.

Silence worked. Once of the few pleasant things about travelling with Albel was that he had no interest in learning about her, where anyone else in Airyglyph would have recognized this as an information-gathering trip. She'd learned enough about him to know that the man wouldn't actively attack her and would make efforts to preserve her life.

After two weeks, it wasn't too much to ask to know that. They travelled on in silence for a couple of hours battling minotaurs and nyiads and dragons like old chums, until they came to the end of the line. The doors of the dragons.

"They went this far in?" she asked. Albel had been reading the signs as they went and she had to trust to his judgment. It was getting ridiculous though.

"Crossel is this far in," he replied. Glancing at her. "Do you have a flute?"

"Do I look like a musician?"

The man sighed and set about detaching something from the inner lining of his skirt, using the gauntlet's razor-sharp but clumsy fingers to pluck apart the seams. Out rolled a dragon bone flute, which he picked up with the human hand and put inexpertly to his lips.

"Be ready, Aquarian."

He played and all the doors opened and several dozen dragons entered. Albel lowered the flute, looked at them, and cursed.

"They really don't like you, do they," Nel said dryly.

"I'm playing a dragon's windpipe," he said with equal dryness. "What did you expect?"

It was the first joke she had ever heard him make. It didn't even involve calling the enemy 'maggots' or 'worms'. As they rushed into battle, the sound of his enthused "ambush? That's what you think, maggots!" didn't make her want to change course and run _him_ through.

If they somehow made it through this, she would get him a bottle of wine.

#

Pretty sure making the cheap sashimi joke is the only reason I wanted to write this fic. I used it in game out of curiosity and was PISSED. Then thought '...I imagine this is the sort of thing someone would give Albel as a 'present'.'

There is more silliness in the making.


	4. Chapter 4

I hope the Marquis didn't die in the end of game. I can't remember. …if he did, it's a hereditary title and some other formidable sentient dragon took his place and that's how this is canon. XD Also, completed this fic the other day! Should be up after I clear it with a once-over. Doesn't guarantee quality but I might flinch less when I glance over it later. : )

Thanks for reading and commenting, Knife_Viking! I'm thrilled that chapter three was as fun to read as it was to write.

###

They did make it out, despite Albel's motivating and resilient desire to die in the course of battle. Specifically _this_ battle with _these_ dragons. Once Nel had finished off the last of them (to be fair, Albel had taken out six more than she had), she approached the paralyzed man. The fact that he now expected her to heal him didn't keep him from glaring at him. Pondering how this worked had never been Nel's strong suit, so she threw the sprig of basil in the air and the man staggered back to motion. Together again. Joy.

"Worms," he said derisively, looking at the many corpses surrounding them. Then, after a moment: "Thanks for the help."

"Welcome," she replied, eyeing the bodies for any kind of items. "We're going to have to finish this soon. I didn't stock up for this kind of ongoing mission."

"Fool. Plan for every mission as if it could be your last."

Maybe if the man she travelled with didn't run into every battle headlong, she wouldn't have to believe that every mission _could_ be her last. She said none of this, looking at the several doors leading out of the cave room. All of them were dark, most of the light from flickering pale torches on the walls, and without a map, they would be guessing at where to go.

"Which way are they?"

"North," Albel said and began moving towards the gaping center door. "They will be close."

"Closer than you think," a triune voice came from the door. Albel stopped walking abruptly and Nel sucked in a breath of surprise, teeth clenched. This was not what they needed right now. When the voice spoke again, it held pride and contempt.

"This door is too puny to admit me, little humans, though I can see you. Come in if you want to die. Your comrades already did."

"Solves that problem," Nel said to herself, sheathing the knives. Maybe this would be quick and painless. "Great Crossel, we mean no disrespect and certainly not to disturb you. We came hunting them and without our quarry, we'll leave."

"Then I have done you a favor," the dragon said, its voice huge and thoughtful in the small stone confines. "You should not have told me this."

Fantastic. Usually she was better about not imparting information without cause, but this was Crossel and she had stupidly assumed the dragon would be happy to let them go with nothing more about it.

"I assure you, if there's anything we can do for you—" Nel began.

"There is," Crossel replied and Nel mentally groaned. Everyone wanted something from someone. A bothered dragon was no less subject to pissy requests. Albel cursed. She ignored it.

"What can we do?"

"Never bother me again. And," it began, because Albel was already muttering 'for once we are of one mind.' "Give me something of worth to prove the word of both your countries in this."

'_Too bad we already used the sashimi_,' was the first thought that went flitting across Nel's mind. As she stifled a smile, reminding herself that they were in mortal peril (oh, when _weren't_ they?), she glanced up to see Albel looking at her.

"Aren't you going to give him something, Aquarian?" he asked.

"Both your countries," Crossel rumbled. "It seems to be the only way to get anything done."

"Why should we give you anything of value to us?" Albel asked, stalking closer to the door, empowered by the sheer force of his own arrogance. "You are trapped in that room, massive worm."

In response, Crossel bellowed; a wave of sound eclipsed the room for almost thirty seconds. The walls rattled, floor cracked and Nel was suddenly, jarringly reminded that they were _underground_ with the biggest dragon in existence. It could bring the cave down around them. It would do so if suitably bothered.

"I know you, Albel Nox and Nel Zelpher, and know what I would have from you. You are tiny, warring humans who understand nothing of word or oath, only what I take from you. And I will take your gauntlet and I will take your food. I take that which you prize most."

The food? Nel calculated quickly how many enemies they had run across just getting here. How many they would run across getting back. How many they had killed on the way here. Then subtracted that number by half because Albel would be fighting with one arm.

"Lord Crossel, that is a death sentence!"

"It is an inconvenience. Fight me and die, or submit to it. If you choose neither, I will fill this room with such fire your ancestors will burn and die."

Dragons didn't made idle threats. On the other hand, Albel had drawn his katana and Nel had no trouble imagining him running right into the heart of the flame to bury the sword in Crossel's throat.

"We accept—"

"—that you are an arrogant worm and I would sooner die!"

Annnnnd there he went, ducking to the side wall as Crossel inhaled deeply. Nel had just enough time to throw herself against the opposite side wall, mostly shielded from the wall of flame that erupted from the door and filled the room in a way she hadn't known fire _could_.

Looking over, squinting through the haze of heat, she could see Albel playing the flute. Badly and one-handed, but playing the flute until the wall of flame began to relent. It wasn't just for Crossel to take a breath: the dragon was actually quieting. The man kept playing, missing more notes than a child first learning to play and going flat or sharp on a completely random basis, but Crossel grew languid all the same.

"You cannot tame me," the dragon said after almost a minute of this, voice on the other side of the wall lazy with pleasure. "You are not even _skilled_ at playing the bones of my brother."

Albel stopped playing but—miracle of miracles—said nothing inflammatory. She wondered if he would recognize the pun in that statement.

"Just because I can't give up my own feelings doesn't mean I can't understand air dragons," he said coldly.

"You play the bones in humility then," Crossel said. "Knowing your incompetence."

"That's going too far," Albel said, but it wasn't a challenge. Nel found herself trying to gauge both parties: the possible pissed-off level of Albel and the looming likelihood of Crossel roasting the room. That image of Albel ramming the sword into Crossel's throat amid a blanket of flame still was more of a future than a unlikely idea.

"Regardless of how he plays the flute, we would beg your leave to… well, leave, Lord Crossel," she interjected.

Behind the wall, the dragon shifted its massive weight, stone floor creaking beneath it. The dragon's sound attack had probably damaged even the flooring below.

"You are bothersome, meddlesome humans. You appear after you swore to leave me alone after the restlessness subsided. If I kill one of you, perhaps you will be too busy warring to return."

"Not necessary," Nel said quickly. At the same time, Albel said: "Try it, maggot."

Wait. She turned to look at him in real surprise and he was avoiding her gaze, the cumbersome flute gripped in his human hand.

"It's a death sentence for the remaining party, _worm,_" he spat. Guess you didn't get to be a master tactician without realizing that certain things couldn't be done with limited resources—even when it came to himself. Maybe that flask, the sashimi, and tuna salad was all he had brought, trusting to her to have the rest. She had trouble believing that anymore; with his poor defensive skills, resulting in an ability to shop for the correct things, he had to have more resources. Somewhere.

"Lord Nox is right," she said in a tone more patronizing to Crossel's station and shooting a glare at Albel. "Both of us go back or neither returns. If you kill both of us here, no one will know where we died and they will send more people to investigate. The cycle continues."

"You hope to tire me with slaughter," Crossel said.

She could see Albel's rising irritation as he set about reattaching the flute to the hem of his skirt—possibly to keep himself from talking. It was bizarre to see him sewing here, with a quick hand, but there was no other time for it and it did keep him from saying anything else.

"No, we merely suggest—"

Albel finished—must have been iron wire or some such material—and headed for the far door impudently. All negotiation stopped as he crossed in front of the center door, directly in Crossel's line of sight. Inhaling, Crossel barked a wave of dancing flame into the room and Nel ran after Albel, praying her guard against attack would hold into the next corridor. Halfway across the stone room, it broke down. The brunt of Crossel's flame seared her back and the concussion knocked her forward into Albel; they crashed on the floor of the next room like downed birds.

The flame followed—dammed by the door—and Albel threw his gauntlet up to channel it away. The pillar shot to the ceiling— which cracked and began to fall. They stared up at it in horror before bolting for the next chamber. While not actively on fire, Nel couldn't really think about how her back and shoulders felt. It would have made them hurt more. Crossel roared and the ceiling in the next chamber cracked. Albel cursed. They ran on. Repeat ad nauseum.

"We're going to tell them to leave him alone!" she yelled, just in case they survived this and forgot to tell everyone not to come back here under any circumstances. Neither surviving nor return was likely anyway.

"I'll kill the worm!" Albel replied with appropriate fervor. A particularly large boulder slammed into the ground before them and they veered opposite directions to avoid it.

"When on even ground!" he continued. Oh, good, that explained the whole 'running away in terror' angle of his attack. Assuming they lived to reach even ground. Nel was more concerned with making it through the three chambers left to go, and then getting out of the mountains and back to Airyglyph. Assuming he didn't follow them by air out of the cave.

"Remind me again why the Dragon Brigade didn't bring us?!" she yelled.

"…"

She twisted, readying a runeological spell that would (or might) slow Crossel down long enough that they could get out of the caves. Albel spotted it and swatted her hands down with his human arm, using it as a vertical battering ram.

"Fool! Reserve your strength for healing."

So saying, he pivoted on his heel and sent an wave of energy shooting down the hall behind them, dancing backwards as he did, pivoting again to continue running. After a few seconds later, a massive bawl of anger came from far behind them.

"Foolish worm," Albel muttered, pleased with himself even as he gripped the dented gauntlet. "Victory will be mine."

One chamber left. She couldn't know for sure how much energy that blast had taken from Albel's reserve but she was willing to bet it would require using more of their resources. Defense and Sustainability? Let's leave those to Nel and the Homicidal Attacks on Large Dragons to Albel.

They burst into the final chamber and encountered one of the minotaur things. Before it could even raise its scythe-axes for an attack, Albel was upon it, slashing it relentlessly into a corner until the thing fell to the floor and stopped moving. Blood covered Albel's clothes—it had been a while since a close kill like that.

He strode quickly to the exit, panting for breath and making no effort to hide it.

'_Reserve your strength for healing,_' Nel thought and mentally tagged on the final, unspoken "_me_."

For once, the obligation didn't irritate her: there would be time to rant about his lack of manners and practicality in the court of Airyglyph, where and when they didn't have a dragon after them. Even in that setting, his actions might prove to have been the right ones.

There would be time to analyze it all when they were safe and healed.


	5. Chapter 5

And on we go!

###

Another half hour on the path and they were constantly ducking under shelter, trying to avoid the sweeping gaze of the Marquis. Albel seemed certain the dragon wouldn't leave the mountain altogether, citing that Crossel had only ever proved troublesome when Airyglyph pursued _him_. Nel decided to believe him and, if he was right about Crossel staying here, all they had to do was hide and get off the mountain.

Regrettably, every time they hid, they ran into monsters. Smaller monsters, more of a pain to dispatch than anything else, but they whittled at morale. She still hadn't been able to heal herself, concentrating her energies on performing battle maintenance on Albel. They had just run out of basil when half a dozen red dragons flocked into their path, followed by two of the plodding two-legged green ones.

"Stay here," she snapped, drawing her daggers.

"As if I'd stand by and let an Aquarian do battle!" Albel replied, stepping up next to her and unsheathing his katana. "Hmph."

A couple of minutes later, the man was paralyzed and she was wiping green dragon blood off her blades, sighing.

"I can't even heal you," she told him. Albel glowered at her in response. At least their positioning in the area wasn't bad in terms of seclusion; they could linger here a moment until the effects wore off. She sat down gingerly on one of the neighboring boulders, after checking its base for beetles, baby dragons, or any other enemies that might be hiding there.

"We've got another day's travel going down the mountain. The paths are too nice and he's going to catch up, sooner or later." She leaned forward and dumped a couple of stones out of her boot. Albel's paralysis was near to wearing off, the man's gauntlet starting to flex its claws in little tweaking motions. She had never even thought of that, how strange it must have been to have one part of the body immune while the rest reacted to a brief bout of nerve gas.

"If we can bring down two black dragons, how hard would it be to fly them out?" she asked, pulling the boot back on.

Albel laughed, the noise constricted and humorous.

"_Fool._"

"It's an idea!" she replied. The paralysis was all but gone now and Albel dropped to one knee, bracing his gauntlet on it.

"A stupid one. We will climb down," he said, as if the idea was inherently sane. However, both of them had spent significant time looking down at the cliffs and byways that marked the paths of the truly crazy. Even on the gentler slopes, they had watched dragons lose their footing and take to the air as an alternative to death. Nel fought laughter.

"So our plan is to _die_," she said. "That will certainly confuse the Marquis."

"Others have climbed down before, Aquarian."

She kept staring at him, skeptical, until he amended the statement: "_I_ have climbed down before. Once. After an ill-conceived plan of Duke Vox."

So no people-without-grappling-hooks-for-hands had ever made it down the mountain without using the paths. She sighed and summoned a healing spell. Then another. And another for good measure.

"You plan to use all your energy now?" Albel said, bemused as she applied spell after spell to herself. The runeological effects overlapped and filled her until she felt like she'd be glowing blue so brightly the Marquis could spot them.

"I try to be in good health when people suggest fatal activities," she replied.

"The cliff or the worm. Tiger or the lady," Albel sneered. Then, as she stared: "What?"

"You _read_?"

"When the need arises. Tiger and the lady is a tactician's game." He straightened, rolling his gauntleted shoulder as he moved over to the edge. From where she sat, she could see straight to the opposite side of the range, analyzing the many aged walls of rock and footholds that might not be footholds when there was a hundred twenty-something pounds of weight placed on them. There was no guarantee they wouldn't be spotted by low flying dragons and tossed off into the air. Played with like cats with mice _all the way down_.

"Come on, Aquarian. Got any rope?"

Her initial assessment had been right. Albel was crazy.

#

The 'flying with wild dragons' idea was still better, in Nel's opinion. The rope wasn't even for grappling down, it was for tying her belt to Albel's in case she fell. When she suggested that _he _might fall and drag her to her death, he blinked at her. Held up the gauntlet. Looked quizzical.

It was only after they started the climb down that this action made sense.

Mountain Climbing with Albel the Wicked involved ramming the claws of his gauntlet into the cliff-face on a regular basis, an action she was sure slowly destroyed the item's integrity. He would then reach as far down as possible, find a secure foothold, secure other foot and hand, and ram the claws into a lower area again. Since his method damaged the cliff, he travelled above her.

"You and Cliff must have had a lot to talk about!" she called up once.

"What?"

"Anger issues!"

"…"

She took his silence to indicate lack of comprehension and that was amusing when little else was. In her previous missions, climbing had always been her least favorite activity. When Fayt had expressed curiosity as to recreational hiking in the Mountains of Barr, she told him there wasn't any. Cliff asked about mountain _climbing_ and she had been stumped.

Why would anyone voluntarily do this? Swimming, that was one thing; you were weightless and everything pleasant, but all she could think of in mountain climbing was weight and the pull of Elicoor II's gravity. Mountain climbing for 'fun' was a good way to die. Fayt had explained that there was a lot of safety gear and harnesses and such and that there must be some way to adapt mining tools to use on mountains.

Nel had never reported this 'suggestion' so there was nothing to do but climb, no tools to use but hands and the stupid rope. At least once an hour, they hit a ledge big enough to rest on. Both of them were drenched in sweat when they reached these ledges and, after two hours, panicked to realize they didn't have water. Descending had been the priority and both of them had slipped into marathon mode. Nel grinned at Albel, too annoyed to be annoyed. He seemed to feel the same, though with more snark.

"There's water in juice," she said, handing over one of the Pomelo's from the shrinking stockpile. Albel took it, drained it.

"And such will get us home, Aquarian?"

"It'll get _me _home," she said, rising to his level of snippety. "How much further down?"

He attempted to drink again, forgetting that he had already emptied the container. Recognizing that this was the case was beneath him – he simply pitched the container over the edge of the mountain, muttering something about picking it up at the base. Finally, he thought about the question.

"Three hundred feet."

"Close then!" She toasted her juice to that. "Praise Apris we haven't run into anything dangerous."

"If you like our fortune, don't comment on it, fool." Albel stood, scowling again. "She has ears."

Just because he wanted to rush out again didn't mean she had to. Nel didn't get up, taking her time finishing the Pomelo and relishing the fact that soon the mountain climbing part of their "adventure" would be done with.

"You and fate don't get along?" she asked.

The maniac looked at her and, infusing the statement with all the somber weight he could muster, said: "I was told that the day of my Accession was supposed to be the happiest day of my life."

And he began lowering himself over the edge of the cliff, despite their agreeing that he shouldn't go first _and _the fact that his belt was tied to Nel's. Well, she thought as she finished off the Pomelo and stowed the container in her pack. Fate and fortune might have been jerks to Albel, but the fellow had been this arrogant at the age of fifteen, if you believed the dragons. Maybe the fellow just didn't encounter enough good luck to believe it existed. She got up to follow him, as it was that or untie the rope.

The next two hundred feet went fine, though the terrain was getting more and more smooth, rocks coming loose beneath their feet and skittering to the ground faaaaar below. Albel refused to be chatty. They heard nothing of the Marquis and Nel was beginning to believe they had left him and all the dragons behind—or more precisely, above them. On the last hundred feet, she lost her grip twice and slid several feet down before she regained her grip, panting with fear. Albel lost his grip once as well and crammed the gauntlet into the cliff-face hard enough that she heard him groan as that arm took the weight.

"Albel?"

"Keep quiet, fool." He swung back to face the cliff, established a handhold, and continued climbing down. His breath came louder than her call of concern had and this pissed her off.

"Can you keep going?" She began descending faster, avoiding the gouge marks where he had grasped and slid.

"It is a _tool_," Albel snarked. "Shut up."

At twenty feet to the bottom, he slowed again and let her catch up to him. It was strange to be nearly next to him now, both of them breathing hard, drenched in sweat. It made gripping the wall even trickier than it had already been. Albel glanced down meaningfully and Nel did the same.

Just dark. Maybe some mewling sounds. Those were what she honed in on and decided he was hearing. Without that confirmation, she would have thought he was sensing enemies where there were none. Apris knew they were in bad enough shape to be hearing things.

"Dragon's nest," he said when she looked at him.

"_what_."

"Ten more feet, we drop. Kill them all."

"_WHAT."_

"Kill and run through, until we exit the door." He jerked his chin at the darkness directly down and across from them and if she squinted, there was the outline of an arch in the stone. Forty feet, maybe.

She shook her head.

"We could just climb around. I'm not slaughtering baby dragons just because—"

"A _nursery_. They are bred at Airyglyph, their behavior known. Any complaint will go to all dragons, including the Marquis," Albel said. She got the feeling that the man would have crossed his arms triumphantly if they had been on solid ground. As it was, he had to 'hmph' quietly (victoriously) to himself.

Nel scowled. "We don't have the resources to kill them all."

"They are _worms! _We need no weapons but the will to slaughter."

"Great plan but I think I've got a better. Come here." She climbed a little lower and reached for the man's skirt.

"This is hardly the time, Aquarian," he sneered and did what little he could to move away, succeeding only in dangerously jostling the rope and his own grip on the cliff face.

"You wish. Hold _still._" She quickly located and detached the dragonbone flute from the lining of his skirt and returned to clinging to the wall, gripping it in her right hand.

"How far will they be able to hear this?" she asked.

"_Given that we are whispering now?_" he snarked back. The man was surprisingly good at this, a talent he had heretofore withheld. They could have been getting along much better this whole time, or worse, as the case may be. Someone to trade insults with i.e. 'chat' suited Nel better than sullen silence for days on end.

"Okay. We're going to go down with it. I'm going to need both hands, so give me a moment."

Her hands had to be free to play the flute. But telling him she was going to play piggyback with him to do so wasn't going to go over well. Hmph. Well, _he_ had waited until twenty feet over it to tell her they were descending into a dragon nest. Some indignity would do him good. Plus, Clair, Tynaeve, and Farlene were going to think this was hilarious when she told them later.

When she climbed up to perch on him, he suffered her presence with a minimum of grumbling. There wasn't much question of him throwing her off—at this height, she might have survived and he might fall in the attempt. Regardless, both of them would have ended up in the dragon nursery. Piggyback it was, then. The man didn't move until she was situated (not comfortable, but situated) and began playing the flute. Below, the mewling increased and then, suddenly, began to quiet as Albel climbed down with their One-Woman Band.

By the time they stepped onto solid ground, many of the dragons were snoozing. Albel quickly shrugged her off. If there had been light, she got the feeling he would have been either blushing or absolutely livid—rumor never discussed Albel and women. Or Albel giving piggyback rides. Or Albel being anything close to a normal person.

They stole through the nursery on hushed feet and Albel refrained from killing anything. They made it out, found a hedge, and slept til morning without even having to make it a plan.

###

Not a terribly busy chapter but ah well. Two more to go, cause there is actually a plot to wrap up and all that. :D Thanks for reading!


	6. Chapter 6

Back to fun times. :)

###

There were figures of nightmare, older and more revered than Albel the Wicked, who had less terrifying, mutilated appendages. She didn't need to ask if he could feel the arm now; the man kept his arm stiffly at his side and used it for nothing. And took damage as a result. After the last battle, he caught her watching him with concern. In his sharp look, she saw a flash of something she didn't recognize, just before he went back to scowling at the scenery.

"Something wrong, Nox?" she asked.

"Something wrong, Aquarian?" he imitated sharply, then realized this indicated he was concerned. Also, that he had been listening and reacting to her statement. Oh Apris, for a second he had sounded almost human! Couldn't have that. Absolutely not. They travelled the next fifteen minutes in silence and Nel thought about whether or not this mission was a failure and how worried she should be about reporting to Clair and the Queen.

The Brigade members were dead=success.

All the rogue soldiers encountered on their path were dead=success. A bloody success that had been encouraged largely by Albel's insistence on no prisoners but… success.

She and Albel being significantly depleted of energy and dragging themselves home= …something less than success.

They did have enough resources to completely heal one of them, which might improve their chances of getting home. However, the other would be useless in a fight and might do better to just hide until a team could be sent back to get them.

Or the resources could be used to help both of them limp along all the way home. If they got into a tough battle or stumbled onto a nest of rogue soldiers from either country or Albel played chicken with one of those demon rooster things, they would have to fight their way out (or flee) and stagger on. It was conceivable that they could die on the trail.

She already knew what Albel the Wicked would do. "Take no prisoners" probably translated to "Leave anyone who can't pull their own weight" in a desperate situation. She glanced at him slyly, trying to get a read on him, and saw that he was already looking at her. As soon as their eyes met, awkwardly, they looked in opposite directions.

Well why was he looking at _her? She_ was assessing how they were going to get home. He was probably… well, probably still confused about giving her a piggyback ride the night before and if this meant they were dating now. She could imagine sometimes that Albel knew juuuuust enough about how normal people worked to get everything wrong. And kill them when they pointed it out to him, thus taking care of the problem.

They kept walking through a wide-set canyon, trying to avoid the various poisonous spiders and beetles, with Nel acting as advance scout. Albel's rate of becoming alarmed at imagined enemies was decreasing, though it was hard to tell if that was a good thing or a bad thing. An Albel so exhausted he didn't sense enemies could be just as dangerous as an Albel who sensed enemies when they weren't there and was more likely to miss enemies when they did.

Some of this risk had been relieved by Nel's volunteering to play scout. He knew it was her expertise and it was strange to think that on some level, he trusted her to do it.

They had succeeded in travelling without incident for almost two hours when Nel stepped behind a passage of rock for nature's privacy. The nest and overhanging web of large spiders stared at her through hundreds of eyes and the darkness began to climb down and out of the passage. She retreated in horror, calling daggers to hand.

"Nox!"

A curse and the man appeared, katana drawn, about to bolt into the fray. He checked himself, glanced at her, looked up and around the area. There were at least thirty approaching spiders, many of them preparing attacks, shaking abdomens, baring fangs. He actually looked impressed.

"It's against my nature to retreat, but you've stumbled onto too many, Aquarian. Run."

"Good choice," she said, inwardly surprised that she'd called for him at all. It had just been instinct to call for help, even if the help was going to overturn all expectations and say to get the hell out of there.

His arm must have really been hurting.

They got out of range of the spiders (who weren't all that interested in following them) before she mentioned it. The awkward silence was getting silly. Albel travelled ahead of her, moving at a quick gait. If she wasn't here, she got the feeling it would have been a sprint.

"How's your arm?" she said. He moved on as if he hadn't heard her, though he walked a little faster. She knew what was in her pack by heart; if he didn't keep running away from her, she could probably heal it enough to numb the pain a bit. She had that much.

"Nox. If you don't slow down, it's going to get worse."

In response, he sped up.

"Nox!" Gritting her teeth, she called up a petrifaction spell, holding it delicately in her hands. She knew he had heard it come because he went stock still. Turned to glower at her, then at it.

"You need to slow down," she said. He turned fully, eyes narrow with ill temper and pride. Still, that earlier hint of something was in his eyes too. Fear?

"You don't dare leave me here, Aquarian. My king would kill you."

She lifted an eyebrow. A strange topic to bring up. Then again, this was Albel and 'strange' had been on the menu from the beginning.

"The same king who we agreed wasn't going to mourn your death? That one?"

"…" He hadn't thought of that. Ordinarily, he probably wasn't called on to remember casual conversations, only strategies and tactics and positions. Making fun of him now would only make interaction more difficult, so she didn't.

"It's true we haven't got a lot of resources. It might be easier to use all of them to heal one of us while the other ran back and got a rescue party," she said.

"And you want to leave me here," Albel said, as if all his suspicions were justified by her saying this.

"Or I could stay. I didn't say it was the best option. Whoever stays here would be vulnerable to everything."

He pivoted on his heel and kept walking. She released the spell onto a beetle which had been mindlessly making its way closer and closer and strode after him.

"That wasn't the end of the conversation."

"I will not stay here while you run home, _worm_."

"No one said it would definitely be you."

"Yes, I am clearly the choice to go," he said and the sarcasm was thick enough to put Nel's own internal monologue to shame. He didn't expound on the statement, watching the road ahead of them sullenly. Maybe he _knew_ his defense was as bad as it was.

"It isn't that far to Airyglyph anyway," she said.

"…"

"Once we're out of dragon country, everything gets easier."

"…"

Fine. She would be damned if she was going to try and cheer him up now. Her back still felt like a scouring pad from Crossel's fire back in the cave. They were down on the ground now and if there was one thing the former captain of the Black Brigade and the Crimson Blade had in common, it was that they could cover ground like none other.

#

Covering ground wasn't the problem. The problem that Albel was ignoring everything he sensed now and Nel couldn't spot all the Airyglyphian markings that denoted rogues until he pointed them out. Brigades had their own method of communicating and the rogues were mobilizing, the marks growing more and more frequent as they approached Airyglyph.

They tramped through the snow, ready to scrape the sticking powder off their shoes and check into an inn and visit a doctor. In that order or not, they were beyond caring. Each battle was dealt with by Albel, _technically_. In actuality, Albel attacked the rogues (that was all they could battle now, because that was their mission), and Nel fired runelogical attack after runelogical attack until the rogue fell over, defeated. They tied them up, if there was a point, and left, rationalizing that they would send back a team to fetch them all later.

Albel hated this unAiryglyphian method. Nel didn't care and didn't think the king of Airyglyph was going to either.

When at long last they came to the drawbridge, hair and clothing miscolored with snowflakes, Nel let out a long sigh, a white cloud whistling its way into the frigid Airyglyph atmosphere. Seeing Airyglyph was the most unexpected 'good thing' she had ever encountered.

"I owe you a bottle of wine," she said.

"You owe me your _life_, fool," was Albel's quick come-back.

"You owe me yours. Twice."

"So?"

"_So_," she began. She didn't finish the sentence. What was the point in arguing when inn and doctor and warmth was a few short steps across a drawbridge away? She shrugged and strode forward, leaving Albel to trail after her. When she reached the gates however…

"I'm sorry, Crimson Blade, you have been reported missing and must return to Aquaria to report to the Queen," the smug-faced guard said as she handed over her international clearance paperwork.

She stared at the guard. She tried very hard not to snarl.

"Repeat that?" she managed.

"You and Lord Albel have been gone far longer than anticipated and, well, given your history, his majesty and queen Romaria have reported you both missing. If you appear here, you are to return to Aquaria and report to her at the palace."

"I don't think you're seeing me," Nel said with exaggerated patience, fingers itching for her daggers. "I am exhausted. I need help. As does Lord Albel."

"Part of the reason for the order is the concern that you may have murdered Lord Albel," the guard said and Nel looked over her shoulder to make sure the approaching Brigade captain was alive and fully visible.

"_HE'S RIGHT HERE._"

"If you believe I make the rules, Aquarian, you are mistaken. I only carry them out." The guard did a reasonable impression of Albel's sneer.

"Said every toady everywhere," Nel muttered and pivoted on her heel. Albel had taken up a stance several feet away and was watching with interest. More surprising, he didn't look pleased at this development.

"Well, Lord Albel, it appears we've killed each other," she told him. "I'll be in Aquaria, showing them your blood on my daggers and you have fun showing them my decapitated head. We'll probably sort this out in a month or two with several diplomatic envoys and a potted plant or two."

The man lifted an eyebrow, looked from her to the guard.

"I was told you were formidable at sneaking in?"

"Oh yeah, could do that." She looked up at the mountains above the castle and the many enemies that lurked there, waiting for her to use what little energy she had to break into—she smirked.

"Sneak into the castle dungeons? Wouldn't that just suit our pending alliance with Aquaria. But you didn't want the alliance anyway, did you?"

He smiled. Smirked. Smiled. It was damn hard to tell. It wasn't really unpleasant, though.

"You owe me a bottle of wine," he said.

He strode over to the guard and said something in the man's ear, smiling evilly. When the man didn't immediately react, the smile turned into a glare and Albel must have begun to get a bit descriptive. The guard began blinking rapidly and fumbling in his pocket for something. A key. He pushed open the door, apologizing, and Albel waved Nel in after him.

"Come on, Aquarian. I know just the bottle."

###

…if Albel and Nel went missing for a couple of weeks, isn't it logical to think they killed each other? Isn't it? no…?


	7. Chapter 7 Final

Final chapter!

###

"This one."

She looked at the label on the bottle of burgundy wine and balked. Not just at the gold lettering, though that was certainly part of it.

"Albel, that's more than I make in a _month._"

"You defeated enough of those creatures to earn this," he said with worrying certainty, made more concerning by the fact that he was right. She paid for the bottle even as he took it from her hand and headed over to one of the tavern's tables. Pocketing what little remained of her money after the tavernkeeper took his due, she followed Albel. The two goblets on the table weren't subtle. What they were was _deep _and if Nox had his way, soon to be full.

"Nox, don't you think…"

She broke off, watching him. He was experiencing some difficulty trying to open the bottle. The gauntlet was out of commission and he didn't even want to use the claws as crude corkscrews, so he was stuck trying to hold it in the crook of his elbow and wrench the cork out. Sighing, she asked for a corkscrew from the tavernkeeper, got one, and returned to the table and Albel the Wicked, still being outclassed by a piece of porous wood. She held out a hand for the bottle. Scowling, he handed it over.

"Don't you think there's a better time for this?" she asked, beginning to prize the cork out of the bottle. "Your king thinks you're dead or a traitor."

"And that's a conversation you think I'm eager to rush into, Aquarian?" Albel laughed once, accepting the uncorked bottle as she handed it over.

"I think it's a conversation that should happen when you're sober," she said.

He filled his goblet but not hers. The dark eyes, near hidden under the bangs flicked up to her as his hand canted the bottle back, the wine slowing to a dark red trickle.

"My king is shortly going to learn that I am not dead or a traitor. I think he will prefer me warm and content and easily restrained. Wine or brandy, Aquarian?"

"What?" Her mind had tripped up on the 'easily restrained' and she had missed the thread of conversation. "Neither. One of us should keep a head."

He signaled the tavernkeeper. "Brandy."

"Nox. No."

"For your back," he said, taking an appreciative sip of the wine. "Medicinal."

"I didn't think you knew big words like that," she said, leaning back in her chair as the bartender filled her goblet with brandy. _Filled _it. There was no way she was going to drink that before a royal interview!

"You realize if you had poured that, I wouldn't even touch it," she told Albel.

He sipped at his goblet and nodded, setting the drink on the table with a gentle sound of metal meeting wood. They sat in silence for perhaps ten minutes, mulling over the old war. After that, they talked a little on what it had been like to travel in space to battle foreign masters of all reality. She was surprised, and not surprised, to find that Albel didn't think the man could really do all of what he said. Just a whole hell of a lot of it and could back it up with fighting ability.

They had one of the more clandestine tables and their conversation went on, off and on, for another half hour, as Albel worked his way through half the wine bottle and Nel through a fourth of the goblet's brandy. It took the Airyglyphian chill off in a way that artificial warmth and heavier clothing couldn't and her back felt less like a furnace.

Finally, Albel stood, his chair scooting back on the stone floor.

"Ready now?" Nel asked, following his example.

"Once you present yourself to the king, you can leave."

"Excuse me?"

"Leave for an inn, leave for home, I don't care, Aquarian."

Insufferable-! She stopped herself from responding and dipped her head politely, saying nothing. This had the intended effect of bothering him immensely all the way back to the Airyglyphian castle, constantly looking over his shoulder. Constantly almost-sorta-kinda wanting to ask her what her reaction would be, if she said it.

A far cry from the man she originally left Airyglyph with weeks prior.

The guards at the castle let them in without complaint because Albel strode in like a storm on the horizon, growling 'the Aquarian is mine' (apparently 'with me' was too complicated), and shoved open the door to the audience chamber with great force, sending it swinging inwards.

"Lord Albel Nox," an unfortunate crier said belatedly. Then, spotting Nel: "And the Crimson Blade, Lady Nel Zelpher!"

"Lord Albel," the king said without surprise. He had probably been warned. "You return."

"With the Lady Nel, head still attached. Even breathing." Albel gestured at her illustratively.

"No one thought you would kill her—"

"That is a _lie_," Albel retorted.

NOW the king looked surprised. So did Albel, face locking in a semi-paralyzed 'did I just say what I think I said'. It was too good to pass up. Nel nudged him.

"Sober, you wouldn't have done that."

"Hmph." The paralyzed look disappeared and he settled for bowing his head slightly, muttering about apologies.

"My Lord Arzei," Nel said, dropping to one knee (as Albel should have done and still hadn't). "Lord Albel and I have returned safely, though I am in need of some rest before I return to Aquaria. It is for this reason that I have circumvented the ruling about returning to Aquaria immediately. Lord Albel assisted me. Please don't judge him too harshly. If it suits you, I can write a letter to my Queen, explaining."

"Of course, Lady Nel. We are pleased to see you both alive and well. Evidence suggested otherwise." The monarch's eyes still drifted to Albel, puzzled and more than a little bemused. "Though we received reports of your arrival as early as an hour ago."

"A prior obligation," Nel said.

"You let him drink wine, didn't you."

"I assure you, if I knew he was going to insult you in that way—"

"I apologize, my Lord!" Albel said finally, as if breaking out of a minutes-long fugue. "And the Aquarian can go now."

Again, the king looked surprised. "I will need a full briefing from both of you and you did break in here, rather than me sending from you. This was a joint mission of both Aquaria and Airyglyph."

"Are you worried I'm going to report on _you_?" Nel asked in an undertone, glancing over at the man as the king went on. Albel's gaze had shifted to the dark shadows behind the throne and stuck there. Due to the unusual way in which he had entered the chambers, his katana hadn't been taken by the guards and was still at his belt. The claws at the end of the gauntlet twitched, though the strain in his neck made it clear the motion was anything but intentional. Nel sidled closer to him.

"Nox. Safe ground. Don't pull a sword in here."

"Shut up, Aquarian." Still, he forced his stance into a less hostile one, brought his hand away from the hilt of his katana. Yes, he _had_ been worried about her telling the king about his behavior. If even he was capable of recognizing it in himself, it was a problem serious enough to warrant telling the king and he didn't want her to.

All the same, the king was watching them with interest. Nel sidled away, suddenly realized how intimate it must look.

"My Lord Arzei, I can explain—"

The king waved a hand lightly. "No need, I have seen this behavior before in some of my best and most trusted warriors. I know you Aquarians have your care houses and we Airyglyphians used to use it to its advantage. Lord Nox, a new gauntlet will have to be devised for you. Until that time, I am removing you from duty, patrol or mission-based, and confining you to the city. Do not blame Lady Zelpher, it is something I have been aware of for some time. I shouldn't have let you go on the mission at all but," he sighed and Nel knew what that sigh meant. "It is a strain to have you trapped in the city."

The man's eyes went narrow and angry. He refused to look at Nel, his next words a reluctant hiss.

"I'll die of boredom."

That was his own business; the topic of 'death' had reminded Nel that they had come very close to it from another source.

"My Lord Arzei, it will be included in our mission briefing but I would like to say now that no further contact should be made with the Marquis."

"The great dragon? We didn't plan to make any further contact with the beast." The king looked puzzled—again. Understandable though, as the flow of the conversation had been anything but logical.

"I do not recommend doing so. Ever again," Nel said.

"You bothered him, didn't you." Another question not meant to be answered, accompanied by a deadpan expression. Oh to be the beleaguered ruler of Airyglyph…

"The worm is the reason the Lady Nel's back is so badly injured and why she must stay here for the next few days until it is repaired," Albel interrupted, the words emphatic and yet steeped in conviction; this was what had to happen, what _would_ happen. Both the king and Nel stared at Albel. The man gestured dismissively at her.

"I will die of boredom, Aquarian, and you go swanning off right back into the fray? Hardly fair."

"Swanning—I have responsibilities, Nox! And I bought you your damn wine already. My obligations here are _done_."

Airyglyph was a decent town—things were cheap here, the beds warm, and several of Aquaria's doctors were already here, teaching the Airyglyph doctors who were willing to learn the basics of runeology—but it wasn't a vacation. And if she accepted this proposal, Clair and her subordinates were never going to let her hear the end of it.

"My Lord Arzei, please let me know when we can give you our briefing." She bowed. "I will be at the inn, preparing a report for my Queen and yourself."

"Thank you, Zelpher, you are dismissed."

As she shut the door behind herself, she heard the lecture begin.

#

The reports more or less wrote themselves and ended with a pretty statement like "_as a result, relations between Aquaria and Airyglyph have improved, though our asset in the form of air dragon Lord Crossel i.e. the Marquis, has been irrevocably damaged, likely beyond repair. This is Albel's fault_."

She crossed out the last line. Wrote it in again. Crossed it out.

Play nice.

She left it crossed out. Once more, she calculated how long it would take her to get home if she left tomorrow morning.

Albel had already been by this evening. He hadn't appeared to want to come and there was good reason: he wore a long-sleeved unfamiliar coat, one sleeve of which hung distressingly empty. The constant wind played with it.

"The sentimental fool said to say thank you," he said when she opened the door. Since all inns required payment in advance, a couple of the rooms had doors to the street to facilitate guests' coming and going. Hers was one of those, which had pleased her, given her profession and the fact that the castle had paid for her lodging.

She blinked a couple of times. Given that it was Albel, the sentimental fool could be anyone from a small child playing in the street to the king. She opted for the latter.

"You're welcome."

"Safe journey."

She lifted an eyebrow, really surprised now and opened the door a bit wider, letting the light out into the night street.

"He said that too?"

"…"

"I'm joking." Then, because the wine and the life-saving and everything might have muddled it: "Thank you, Nox. Whatever you did during the war, you weren't the worst, and you're helping us now. You _have_ saved my life and I'm grateful for that."

He stood there a moment, as if digesting her statement, then said:

"You don't even want to kill me anymore. How boring."

"If I did, you'd be dead," she said, crossing her arms. She allowed herself a smile too. Albel the Wicked was voluntarily passing the time with an Aquarian and nobody was dying.

"A worthy opponent," he said. "Go home."

"I thought you wanted me to stay?"

"I was drunk and you annoy me. Come back often enough that I don't get bored, fool."

"How often is that?" she asked, curious despite her better judgment. A year? Two years? How often did Albel get bored and how often was he going to stir up trouble to prevent boredom?

"You'll know when I show up in Aquios," he called back, sneer in his voice. Nel sighed. Maybe, if she was really, spectacularly lucky, she wouldn't be seeing him at the (obligatory) Holy Festival of Apris with its 48 royal ceremonies and long prayers and hundreds of devout Apris followers who still feared Airyglyph and the Wicked take-no-prisoners fiend it had spawned. Maybe he wouldn't come.

But she wasn't going to count on it.

###

That's all there is, there isn't any more. Thank you for reading! I'm glad I could contribute this to the world of Nelbel. Conflicting personalities never really get old for me. If you enjoyed it, please do comment, as I'd love to hear from you. :)


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